An expert model for self-care problems classification using probabilistic neural network and feature selection approach

Self-care problems classification is one of the important challenges for occupational therapists. Extent and variety of disorders make the self-care problems classification process complex and time-consuming. To overcome this challenge, an expert model is proposed innovatively in this research. The proposed model is based on Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) for classifying self-care problems of children with physical and motor disability. In this model, PNN is employed as a classifier and GA is applied for feature selection. The PNN is trained by using a standard ICF-CY dataset. Based on ICF-CY, occupational therapists must evaluate many features to diagnose self-care problems. According to the experiences of occupational therapists, these features have different effects on classification. Hence, GA is employed to select relevant and important features in self-care problems classification. Since the classification rules are important for occupational therapists, the self-care problems classification rules are extracted additionally by using the CART algorithm. The experimental results show that by using the feature selection algorithm, the accuracy and time complexity of classification are improved in comparison to other models. The proposed model can classify self-care problems of children with 94.28% accuracy by using only 16.5% of all features. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.